RafranzDavis.com

The Secret Ingredient to Growth: Blogging

July 8, 2013

When I was in High School, I thought that I was a good writer, until my English teacher told me that I was not. When I scored a perfect score on my “state test”, she demanded to know if I cheated. I will never forget how low she made me feel. I must’ve been able to get over it because I did really well on all of my college writing assignments even extending to my Master’s program. I wanted to be an English major, but I was still afraid of writing because I was told that I could not. So, I chose math.

Blogging has been just as important to me as building a PLN. With my PLN, I’ve grown in terms of who I am as a leader and in my beliefs. Through chatting, I’ve been challenged to dig deep and consider processes. Blogging helps me to expand those processes into my own thoughts.

I have always been growth minded and self reflective. I’ve kept a daily journal that spans my entire career in education. I always thought that those words…my good and bad moments, needed to be personal. This is where my PLN comes in. I’ve learned and accepted that it does NOT. We all have the same struggles. We may be on different playing fields but the reality is that our walk down the path of trying to be the best of who we are is the same.

I commented on a student blog today, posted by one of Sam Patterson‘s students. The young lady chose a quote that really spoke to me. She wrote,

“To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music the words make.” ~Truman Capote, McCall’s, November 1967.

It was the first line of her blog. If you are not following Sam’s work with his students, you should. The hashtag is #comments4kids.

I’ve been asked often how I write. Do I plan it? Do I write it down? Do I type in something else and then transfer? I do none of those things…unless I am forced to by the lack of connectivity. When I write, I write from the heart. My heart speaks and my fingers do the work. It may sound cliche, but this is what I do. I have to feel something about the subject and be moved enough to formulate the words. If I am not moved, I will NOT write about it. This is my NEW truth, only sparked after a 2 minute conversation at ISTE with George Couros. I’m glad for that conversation because it really made me look inside of who I was and the story that I was writing for myself. That is the power of blogging. You are defining your story before anyone else can.

If you are new to blogging, you are probably being inundated with tons of “start with this” blogs. I’ve seen many posted today. If I were to give you any advice, it would be this…